The worst part of life is when the person who gave you the best memories becomes a memory.
– Invajy.com
Two minutes before midnight on August 30, 1957, thousands were gathered in the dark at Kuala Lumpur’s Selangor Club as the British anthem rung out for the last time.
As the clocktower stuck at the stroke of midnight, the lights came on as the new Malayan flag and anthem Negara Ku rung out to chants of ‘Merdeka’ led by Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman.
Two years later on July 31, 1960, the British engineered the end of the 12-year Malayan emergency but it did not stop the hardcore communist militants.
In the 1950s, my father, who had been praised for his role in curbing urban terrorism linked to the secret societies in Penang, was highly commended by Sir Gerald Templer.
In his memoir ‘The Adventures of Johnny Ritchie’, my dad said: “Our policy of encouraging the terrorists to surrender was increasingly successful as by this time the morale of the communists had been well and truly shattered.
“Eventually, the government’s policy of encouraging the terrorists to surrender led to the states being declared white areas which meant they were completely free of militant communists.”
My father, who was Malacca police chief and also involved in first General election personally, helped during the campaign period between the Alliance and opposition.
He wrote candidly: “At one time the crowd was so huge I climbed onto a table to monitor the situation. Soon, I was completely hemmed in on the table which was swaying from side to side.
“A police radio car which was in the vicinity of the polling station reported the matter to headquarters in Kuala Lumpur that the police chief was in trouble and were thinking of rescuing me because there could have been communist sympathisers in the crowd.”
But it had a happy ending because 42-year-old Ritchie hopped off the table before rescue came and returned to office to welcome the news of ‘Merdeka’.
After the election, my parents went on a four-month long world tour — first visiting Hong Kong where my mother Lily Harpur Pierson had schooled for several years.
On the Japanese leg, they visited Nagasaki where Lily’s Japanese ‘mother’ died during the 1945 atomic bombing.
On the last leg, they sailed across the Pacific to San Francisco where he was surprised and delighted to find a police car at their disposal.
Travelling across USA, they visited Los Angeles and met an American woman whose neighbour was Reverend H. B. Armsturz (later Bishop of the Singapore Methodist church) who had married during the War in 1942.
Before the tour ended in 1958, my mother visited her foster father James Pierson’s sister near London.
Unbeknownst to her, Lily only revealed she was adopted after she read of Pierson’s demise in 1961.
Ironically, Harpur died in 1976 at the age of 91, and my mother the following year at the age of 57.
If she had known earlier, I sometimes wondered if my mother’s life would have taken the family in a different direction.
In 1978, I told the heir-apparent to the Pahang throne my story which lead to the meeting of a Jerantut ferry man with clues to the village of my Malay forebear.
To continue with my father’s journey, in November 1959, he was sent to the border state of Kelantan as chief police officer where his responsibility kept an eye on the Muslim separatists of Pattani in South Thailand.
Despite the end of the 12-year-old Emergency on July 31, 1960, talks were held by Chin Peng and China’s Deng Xiaoping to open up a second phase of armed struggle at the Thai-Malaysian border where 600 guerrillas and 1,000 reservists were based.
Another phase was confined to the jungle in northen Perak and Kedah-Perlis and mainly Thailand’s provinces of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat, Songkhla and Sadao.
In Kelantan, my father was feted by the state and Kelantan’s Sultan Ibrahim who accorded him the greatest respect as commander of both the Kelantan military and police.
CPO Ritchie said: “Every year, the police would hold their sports meeting and it was always a grand occasion with the Sultan and local VIPs in attendance.
“When I arrived at a sports meet, I was astounded when a 17-gun salute boomed out. I was told that it was customary for the salute to be fired for the CPO on his occasion.”
“Sadly, the Sultan died at the age of 63 in July 1960 but to our surprise we received a ‘gift’ from royal household from the King’s stable of canines — an imported pedigree Pembroke Corgie whom we named ‘Prince’.”
In 1961, John Ritchie was transferred again to Alor Star as chief police officer of Kedah and Perlis and cultivated the friendship with a member of the Kedah royalty Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman.
Conversant in Thai, both were sportsmen and were also horse champions — Tunku’s with ‘Think Big’ which won the Melbourne Cup twice and ‘Bright Eyes’ my father’s Australian griffin, who won 17 races and $120,000, the best Malayan race winner of all time.
As police chief, Ritchie was appointed chairman of the Malaysian Border Operations Committee which was directly responsible to the Ministry of Home Affairs.
He cultivated a close relationship with army chief General Kriangksak Chamanan, and I was able to secure an exclusive interview in Bangkok just before he became Prime Minister of Thailand.
During that time, I participated in Malaysia-Thai joint army Operations ‘Daoyai-Musnah’ and rode in the turret of a Malaysian reconnaissance armoured vehicle in the jungles of Southern Thailand.
My father’s tenure in Alor Star was significant because we lived among the top government officials and VIPs, such as former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamed and Lord President Tun Mohamed Suffian.
Our neighbour Tun Suffian who married Englishwoman ‘Auntie Bunny’ later wrote the back cover blurb for my father’s memoir.
He said: “John, fluent in Bahasa, Cantonese, Thai and of course English, is the kind of people we depend confidently for law and order being maintained firmly, fairly, with a sense of humour and humanity and for peace and harmony which we take for granted.”
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune.
